Ephraim George Squier (June 17, 1821 – April 17, 1888) was an American archaeologist, diplomat, and journalist. Born in Bethlehem, New York, he spent his early career in the northeastern United States. There, along with his colleague Edwin H. Davis, he was a prominent investigator of the prehistoric Indian mounds of the Ohio River valley. Squier received national recognition after he co-authored Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848). It was the first publication of the newly established Smithsonian Institution.
Squier's diplomatic career and archaeological fieldwork reflected his involvement in the geopolitical expansion of the United States. A proponent of American commercial interests, he also looked to Central America for interoceanic transit routes. Squier negotiated treaties in Nicaragua and Honduras, and his diplomatic efforts placed him in direct conflict with the British Empire. He began his professional practice as a newspaper editor and political organizer before developing his better-known career as an anthropologist and surveyor of Inca sites in Peru.
Later in his life, Squier's theoretical conclusions regarding a "lost race" of Mound Builders fell out of favor. Following a severe mental breakdown and the end of his marriage to Miriam Florence Folline, he moved out of his active professional life and into a private asylum, eventually living quietly in Brooklyn. Squier was a founding member and the first president of the Anthropological Institute of New-York. His empirical surveying methods established early standards for American archaeology, and his collections are held by institutions like the American Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
Ephraim George Squier was born on June 17, 1821, in Bethlehem, New York. His father, Joel Squier, was an itinerant Methodist minister, and his mother, Katherine Kilmer Squier, died when he was twelve years old. Due to his family's modest means, Squier largely educated himself and attended local common schools. Between 1836 and 1839, he studied at the Troy Conference Academy in West Poultney, Vermont. He briefly worked as a teacher in local schools but disliked the profession. Squier studied mathematics and geometry to qualify as a civil engineer. He abandoned the field after the Panic of 1837 halted public works construction.
Squier subsequently pursued a career in literature and journalism. In 1840, he became a contributing editor for The Literary Pearl, a poetry magazine published in Charlton, New York. He relocated to Albany, New York, where he published the short-lived Lady's Cabinet Magazine and The Poet's Magazine. In Albany, Squier co-edited the New York State Mechanic with Joel Munsell. The weekly newspaper served as the official organ of the New York Mechanics' Association. Squier wrote editorials advocating for the social advancement of the working class and campaigned against the use of convict labor in mechanical trades.
The New York State Mechanic ceased publication in June 1843. In November of that year, Squier moved to Connecticut to co-edit the Hartford Journal. The newspaper was an official organ of the Whig Party, and Squier used his position to advocate for protective tariffs and support Henry Clay's 1844 presidential campaign. He also worked as a political organizer, establishing local Clay Clubs and serving as a delegate to the 1844 Whig Young Men's Convention. Following Clay's electoral defeat and the sale of the Hartford Journal, Squier accepted a position as the editor of the Scioto Gazette. He relocated to Chillicothe, Ohio, in early 1845.
Squier moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1845 to edit the Scioto Gazette. There, he met Edwin Hamilton Davis, a local physician who had investigated prehistoric Indian mounds since 1831. Squier and Davis formed a partnership to systematically survey and excavate the earthworks of the Scioto River valley. Between 1845 and 1847, they excavated approximately two hundred mounds and surveyed one hundred earthen enclosures. Davis financed the majority of the fieldwork and classified the recovered artifacts. Squier conducted the surveying, drafted the maps, and wrote the resulting reports. They recorded the internal stratigraphy of the mounds and distinguished between the original deposits at the base and the intrusive, later burials near the surface.
Squier sought financial backing from eastern scientific organizations, including the American Ethnological Society and the American Antiquarian Society. In 1847, Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the newly established Smithsonian Institution, agreed to publish their findings. Henry insisted that Squier and Davis remove their unsubstantiated speculations from the manuscript to ensure the work remained a strictly empirical, scientific addition to human knowledge. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley was published in 1848 as the inaugural volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge series. During the publication process, Squier and Davis developed an acrimonious dispute over authorship and credit. Squier claimed primary responsibility for the research and marginalized Davis's contributions, leading to the permanent estrangement of the two men.
In Ancient Monuments, Squier and Davis classified the earthworks into functional categories, including defensive works, sacred enclosures, altar mounds, and sepulchral mounds. They concluded that the mounds were constructed by a dense, agricultural population possessing mathematical and engineering skills. Squier and Davis adhered to the 19th-century "Mound Builder" myth, arguing that the builders were an extinct, highly civilized race distinct from contemporary Native Americans. They submitted a skull recovered from an original mound burial to the physical anthropologist Samuel George Morton. Morton classified the cranium as "Toltecan." Squier hypothesized that the Mound Builders were ethnically linked to the indigenous civilizations of Mexico and Central America and had been driven southward by hostile hunter-gatherer tribes.
Despite their adherence to the Mound Builder myth, Squier and Davis rejected claims that the ancient inhabitants possessed alphabetic writing. Squier publicly denounced the Grave Creek Stone, an inscribed tablet allegedly found in a West Virginia mound, as a hoax. He argued that attributing alphabetic writing to the Mound Builders contradicted the historical development of indigenous American civilizations. In 1849, Squier conducted a separate survey of earthworks in western New York, published by the Smithsonian as Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York. He concluded that the New York enclosures were relatively recent and had been constructed by the Iroquois for defensive purposes. He maintained that the larger Ohio earthworks were the product of the extinct Mound Builder race.
Diplomatic career in Central America
In May 1849, the Zachary Taylor administration appointed Squier as chargé d'affaires to Central America. The United States sought an interoceanic transit route following the California Gold Rush and the acquisition of Pacific territories to incorporate the Pacific basin market into the American economy. Squier's primary directive was to secure the right-of-way for a canal across Nicaragua. On August 27, 1849, he negotiated a treaty granting the American Atlantic and Pacific Ship-Canal Company, directed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, exclusive rights to construct the waterway. Squier aggressively opposed British territorial claims in the region and recommended the United States purchase Tigre Island in the Gulf of Fonseca. British forces seized the island in October 1849. The United States Senate declined to ratify Squier's treaty to avoid a direct confrontation with Great Britain. The diplomatic tensions generated by Squier's negotiations were subsequently resolved by the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty of 1850.
Squier shifted his focus to Honduras in 1852 after the Nicaraguan canal project stalled. He proposed a 160-mile railway from Puerto Caballos on the Caribbean to the Gulf of Fonseca on the Pacific. Squier formed a preliminary company with New York merchants and politicians, including Robert J. Walker and Robert F. Stockton. In February 1853, he led a surveying expedition to Honduras under the guise of a scientific mission. Squier negotiated a charter with Honduran President José Trinidad Cabañas on June 23, 1853. The agreement granted the company exclusive transit rights, free construction materials, and 1,000 square miles of land.